Briefing: when Trump likens his intelligence services to Nazis

Donald Trump likens US intelligence services practices to those of Nazi Germany, accusing them of leaking allegations that Russian intelligence agencies have compromising material on him.

Secret Services give credibility to “phoney staff.”

Secret service allegedly reported to Donald Trump and Barack Obama information, which they deem credible that Russian agencies have compromising material that makes the President-elect an easy prey to blackmail.

The leak of this report on Wednesday enraged the President-elect, holding responsible for the leak the Secret Services, whom he likened to Nazis. The leak is “… something that Nazi Germany would have done and did do.” The 35-page report was published by Buzzfeed and reported by CNN.

The substance of the compromising material is of a sexual nature and involved sex workers in St. Petersburg and the at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Moscow. The material refers to video and audio tapes. The BBC reports that the report on this issue is founded on the research of a former MI6 agent, Christopher Steele, but that there are in fact multiple sources.

But, the President-elect was clear on Wednesday that “it’s all fake news, it’s phoney stuff, it didn’t happen,” while he spoke of a conspiracy of his opponents that had “put that crap together… it’s an absolute disgrace.”

The spokesman of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Peskov, called the whole report “pulp fiction” designed to undermine US-Russian bilateral relations.

A few hours later, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper responded he did not “made any judgment” that the information in the dossier was reliable and did not believe the intelligence community was the source of the leaked allegations. But, he did not say that dossier did not exist.

Russia did favour Trump’s campaign

However, Mr. Trump made a step back on Wednesday to admit that Russia was behind hacking attacks seeking to discredit his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Although the President-elect said “hacking is bad,” he also qualified his condemnation saying “look at what was learned from that hacking.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be America’s Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, also admitted that it is a “fair assumption” that Putin orchestrated an influence campaign against Hillary Clinton.

The admission completes the retreat of Donald Trump’s team from complete denial of Russian involvement. On Sunday, Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, was the first to admit that Russia was behind the hacking of Democratic Party organizations.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump refused to answer whether there was direct communication between Russia and his team during the campaign. However, “if Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability,” the President-elect said.

Until last week, Mr. Trump speculated that China or a 400-pound hacker sitting on his bed could have hacked the Democratic Party.

Secret services limit Trump’s room for maneuver

On Frida, the CIA briefed President-elect Trump identifying the individual Russian officials who fed material hacked from the Democratic National Committee and party leaders to WikiLeaks.

Officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to Reuters said that CIA concluded that the Russian government intended to support Donald Trump.

In an interview with Fox News last week, the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange said he did not receive emails stolen from the DNC and Clinton aide John Podesta from “a state party.” Donald Trump Tweeted the interview questioning the accuracy of intelligence reports he received from US Secret Services. Now, he is admitting that Russia did help his campaign, “probably.”